For my money, Bill Lueders and John Nichols are the two best political writers living in Wisconsin.
But I was stunned to read Lueders’ piece, “In Defense of Annette Ziegler,” in which Lueders calls Nichols’ criticism of Supreme Court Justice Annette Ziegler’s admitted conflicts of interests “way overblown,” “unfair,” and motivated by hostility toward Ziegler’s “ideology.”
Lueders’ acknowledges “… Ziegler was wrong to preside over cases in which she had an undisclosed personal connection to one of the parties. Her poor judgment was exacerbated by her initial refusal to admit she'd done anything wrong. …”
Wrong? A more apt description of Ziegler’s judicial misconduct is appalling, and contrary to settled law and ethical rules that specifically call for judges to avoid impropriety and the appearance of impropriety to promote public confidence in the impartiality of the judiciary.
Lueders knows better than most the violence that can be inflicted upon citizens by officials at all levels of law enforcement and the judiciary in civil and criminal litigation.
Judges have the power to interpret and apply the law, and the affirmative duty to maintain an ethical commitment to impartiality without which judicial rulings are an assault on the political body—that’s us.
Ziegler failed that duty, over and over, and this ought to disqualify her from sitting on the state’s highest bench, making judicial policy, whatever the recommended ruling of a judicial panel. [From the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign: Attorneys who violate rules governing their professional behavior and ethics – or who even fail to pay their annual State Bar dues on time – get stiffer punishment than the penalties being recommended for Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Annette Ziegler who had economic conflicts of interest in dozens of cases she handled as a circuit court judge, according to a Wisconsin Democracy Campaign review. ]
WMC
Lueders aims his harshest attack on Nichols’ condemnations centering on Ziegler’s hearing a case involving Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce (WMC), which any serious political observer will tell you, paid for the election of Ziegler to the Court.
Writes Lueders:
When Ziegler agreed to hear a case involving Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce (WMC), the big-business lobby group that spent more than $2 million to get her elected (more than her own campaign's record-breaking sum), The Cap Times was apoplectic.
… The objections being sounded by The Cap Times and others have everything to do with ideology. If a liberal justice committed the same indiscretions, WMC would be demanding her resignation and The Cap Times would be saying it was not a big deal.
Fine, let Lueders cite another judge who has heard (without notifying the litigants) over 50 cases in which her/his family has a financial stake, who lied about it repeatedly during the campaign for Supreme Court, and who after the election hears a case on which the lobbying entity that elected (or rather just paid $2 million in ads favorable to her election) her has a clear financial interest; and then let’s read the resulting criticism or cite the absence of it. Lueders cites no such judge.
Lueders concludes:
But it was the voters of Wisconsin, not WMC, who elected Annette Ziegler — and by a wide margin. If they were paying attention, they would have known about her conflicts and her “I'm with you” signals to conservatives. But they either didn't know or didn't care.
If we want a different system, we should fight for it. … In the meantime, we'll continue to get justices like Annette Ziegler. In other words, we'll get the justices we deserve.
No, the Supreme Court has the power right now to suspend or expel Ziegler whom we do not deserve.
And though Ziegler is certainly not alone in hearing cases in which litigants have contributed money in or advocated in the political system for a subsequently sitting judge, and public financing is certainly needed, the confluence of Ziegler’s misconduct, her lying about it, and her refusal to recuse herself from the WMC-related case, has diluted the confidence of the public in an impartial judiciary and ought to disqualify her from sitting on the state’s highest court.
If such an expulsion were to result in shining the light on other judicial misconduct and political corruption, so much the better.
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